Description
Book SynopsisWar and Words is a sweeping study of the profound, painful, and most significantly, defining cultural moments. Working from Homer through to Hemingway and in all traditions, some of the nation''s best scholars of literature illustrate how literature and language affect not only the present but also future generations by shaping history even as they represent it. This powerful collection affirms that the humanities remain a site of the most profound reflection on human experience and historical events that have, for better and worse, shaped world civilization. War and Words offers students of literature critical tools for reading literary explorations of ambivalence toward war and provides teachers of literature a suggested syllabus for a course that has become all too necessary in a time when all our lives are touched by war.
Trade ReviewThis scrupulously gathered collection of essays pursues a striking concept. . . . How does literary genius, from Homer to Shakespeare to Tolstoi and Yeats, manage to lift the horror of war, savagery, and repression into the realm of tragic greatness? The editors have given us much to think out, in the classroom and in our private studies. -- David Bevington, University of Chicago
Highly Recommended. * CHOICE *
An insightful an dthought provoking study, and should be read by anyone interested in the literature of war and how western society views this important and destructive institution. * H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online *
Table of Contents1 I. Introduction 2 Introduction: War and Words 3 Part I: Arms and the Man: Voices from the Center 4 Chapter 1: Stories of War and Peace: Sacred, Secular, and Holy 5 Chapter 2: The Chalice and the Blade: Engendering War in Classical Literature 6 Chapter 3: Violence, Terrorism, and War in Marlowe's Tamburlaine Plays 7 Chapter 4: Henry V at War: Christian King or Model Machiavel 8 Chapter 5: 'Born for Opposition': Lord Bryon's Irresistible Tug-of-War 9 Chapter 6: 'Civilized Barbarity': Melville and the Dark Paradoxes of Waging Modern War 10 Chapter 7: Editha's War: 'How Glorious!' 11 Chapter 8: Make War on War: A Shavian Conundrum 12 Chapter 9: Words, War, and Peace: The Nature of Orwell's Pacifism 13 Chapter 10: Understanding Hemingway's Multiple Voices of War: A Rhetorical Study 14 Part II: Arms and the Other: Voices from the Margins 15 Chapter 11: Seule la culture désintéressée': Virginia Woolf, Gender, and Culture in Time of War 16 Chapter 12: Propaganda, Militarism, and the Home Front in Helen Zenna Smith's Not So Quiet . . . Stepdaughters of War 17 Chapter 13: Who's Speaking? What Are They Saying? Women, Words, and War 18 Chapter 14: War of Words: War 'with' and 'against' in African-American Literature 19 Epilogue: Marlowe in tempore belli
